


Reincarnate

by Aris



Series: self defense mechanisms [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Body Image, Character Study, Eating Disorders, Episode 4 spoilers, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Insecurity, One Shot, Requested tags:, Translation Available, please love yuri plisetsky, yuri-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aris/pseuds/Aris
Summary: “So how is Yakov’s old flame, heh?” Mila asks playfully, spinning his hair around one finger.“She’s killing me,” Yuri tells her. or, Yuri is reborn   french translationspanish translation





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Reincarnate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8586514) by [Scolopendre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scolopendre/pseuds/Scolopendre)
  * Translation into Español available: [Reencarnar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9663524) by [tactlessheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tactlessheart/pseuds/tactlessheart)



Yuri is tired.

The thought is infuriating. It’s the pole of the white flag, the backbone of failure and mediocrity to take even a second to acknowledge an inconvenience such as that. He cannot grow from knowing he is tired, can’t twist and push exhaustion into something beautiful and alien, can’t slice ice or spring himself into the air with dredging, bone deep lethargy. It is a useless pain, if a pain at all, and its sole purpose is a bitter, unfriendly reminder of what he cannot overcome; the barriers of his biology, his physicality, set in stone with splintering bones and raw skin. He cannot be more than what he is, what he’ll become, cannot force himself into a new form.

In this body, this mind, he is restricted. Imprisoned.

_Throw yourself away!_

And he tries to. He digs in deep, claws at imperfections as if every moment of practice was a jagged moment of fight or die, sinks monotonous repetitions into his mind, embeds them deeply among aching organs and burst arteries. _This isn’t good enough. You’ve got to try harder, throw yourself away, throw yourself away!_ The mistakes he makes are hewn from his own flesh and he itches to erase them, scratches them out in blood and bruises, works at that ugly, sneering face until one day it will be smooth, polished. Able to take on a new expression, a new identity, a new Yuri with an elegant ease that will have those around him amazed, jealous in their dark stagnancy as he continues to spin further and further from weighted humanity.

It’s a mirage he clings to walking home at night, tendons twitching and stiff despite his careful, measured cool-down. He can see it clearly, Yuri Pllisetsky gliding across the ice as if only a feather in a breeze, can hear the echo of the announcers amazed at every calculated jump and turn and the pure, slick fluidity poured into every minute movement of a smooth, seamless routine. He can feel dreams shatter around him, inspiration crushed to broken bottle pieces around the aching feet of his competition; they know they can never be this, have this. It’s a picture of perfect control.

Unattainable.

It’s enough to make Yuri’s mouth water, the hollowness in his stomach ring true; he is so hungry to win. To have perfection in his grasp, even just for a fleeting moment of cold, painful exhilaration.

But to be reborn, he must first die.

###### 

He can’t kill himself.

Lilia seems to know this. She guides his hands around his throat, presses down the digits for him, pale limbs icy against his despite the lack of an ice rink. She’s always cold, he notices, regardless of the late season in Russia and the layers of coats, scarves and heating bills heaped one over the next, a touch of chaos in her achingly ordered home. Her skin is sharp when she corrects his posture, gorges into his forgiving flesh to bend to her likening, molding him anew in a mirrored room; he feels her touch through the thin layers he wears, feels her personal winter in every word tumbling from starved-thin lips.

Her face is harrowed. There is nothing of comfort or warmth or motherhood in the way she snaps at him, the way white light loses itself in the dark inclinations of her cheeks. Sometimes, Yuri believes he might see himself in her delicate wrists and sea glass green eyes, but there is an echo so absolutely indescribable in every aspect of her being, he can never be quite sure. He has never caught her relaxing, even propped up in a chair occupied with nothing she looks for all the world like a queen, but there’s a deep, ringing emptiness when he looks past his own pain to see her stand alone, again and again every night despite the company.

She is untouchable. Dead in ways he yearns for.

He hates her, he thinks. He hates her but he longs for her praise, her murmurs of “That’s beautiful, Yuri.” Never quite what he wants, never “You’re beautiful, Yuri.” Because it’s not true. Not yet. He imitates beauty, has not yet torn himself into enough tiny pieces to embody it.

He fucking hates her, actually, hates when she tuts when he eats his meals and hates the way she strokes his cat like it’s hers. Hates how she takes his fracturing shards of identity away, uproots him from his home and his comforts, and she does it like a favour with one of those half smiles she doesn’t mean. And he hates her but he loves the swooping moments when he can move like he’s nothing, like an extension of the air, where he doesn’t have to show off or be flashier than the next skater, where he can be the ice beneath his feet and the music welling up from cheap speakers. 

She tells him hate is powerful. She doesn’t let him leave for lunch. Yuri remembers - jokes about pork cutlet bowls, ramen carts and stalls of foreign foods he doesn’t recognize, he remembers the bitter thoughts he manages to keep to himself. Because he’s cruel, but he’s not cruel enough to gnaw at the fat on Yuuri’s hips, the extra between his thighs and how that’s a presence that has always been with the skater; the promise of more, a meal between just enough and too much. Yuri couldn’t understand how Viktor chose that _pig_ over him, jealousy curling into an ugly weight in his abdomen, how someone could lose control to something as base as food.

Ironically, it’s this that Lilia untangles first, his false beliefs in his body and restraint. She smooths hands over his figure, mouth unmoving from a stern line, and she asks him what he eats in misleadingly gentle tones. She snaps for his meal plan from Yakov, runs plain nails ridged with malnutrition over the accusing foods and says:

“No good! No good!” 

Oatmeal with fruit at breakfast, salad and boiled eggs at lunch, grilled fish with vegetables at dinner. It’s the new balance, and Yuri misses the comfort of warmer foods, of sweets he would swipe on the way home that reminded him of his family, his grandad. But sugar won’t repair torn muscle, sugar won’t pull him through hours of ballet and skating and sugar won’t slim him out, burn him down to the bone. Russian Fairy, they call him, and it feels like a joke he’s not in on.

He bites and snarls when people ask after him, he slices through warm greetings and familiar laughs, wraps himself up in solitude and Lilia’s criticisms. She says, _good_ , and Yuri wonders what he has to do to make her destroy him completely. Burn him to the ground, into a pile of ashes he can pull himself from, stronger and leaner and effortless. 

It’s selfish, or perhaps lazy, to expect her do it. So, Yuri stays behind when Lilia leaves, promises stretching and cool-downs to an uncaring face that is always merely observing. He stands in front of mirrors in shut down ballet studios, stares at himself without his baggy jumper or loose shirts, and he practices the art of destruction.

Bad lighting throws up shadows in a sickeningly relief. They pool beneath his eyes, touch at his cheekbones and fall hard at his jawline. One stripes across his shirt, and he adjusts it, watches the material pull tight against the line of his ribs, dip in as he pulls and smooths back over when he releases it. It’s there. But it’s not enough. It’s intoxicating, holding these chasms and abysses in his body, making room for nothingness between his bones and his skin and his veins. He can be less, he can be nothing. It’s almost dizzying.

He smiles and his fingers tremble where they touch his waist. Smiles have always looked wrong on him. They contort his face, push away coveted bone structure under moving skin. Instead he snarls, twists his lips and stares at the stranger reflected back countless times in the room surrounding him. They hate him, all together, they glare at hips that could be slimmer and legs that could be trimmer, they wordless take in his sloppy posture like a personal offence, as if it’s a crime to stand here in this room and pronounce himself a world-known athlete.

It should be, he realises, and it lashes bitterly against his stupid, arrogant pride. His anger and jealousy has always been useless, has always left him vulnerable and inflexible. These are the reasons Viktor could not choose him, would never have chosen him; Yuri cannot change. Yuri is stagnant. Viktor knew this, had won his own confidence, and discarded Yuri’s empty, empty words. Forgotten them, even, the way a sated predator ignores the annoyance of cocky prey; aware that at any moment of their choosing the tables will turn, and they will win, and therefore there is no use paying it any mind. 

The truth stings. Yuri relishes in it.

###### 

“You’re working very hard, Yuri!” Mila wraps arms around him, sudden and exciting, a rush of heat from another he had forgotten. Lilia is pinching and surgical. Mila props her head on top of his, and muses about all the hours he’s putting in, how she’s been watching him. He can feel her jaw grate against his skull as she speaks. It’s strangely reassuring. He hasn’t done anything to deserve it.

“So how is Yakov’s old flame, heh?” Mila asks playfully, spinning his hair around one finger.

“She’s killing me,” Yuri tells her. Mila laughs, her arm digs into his salient collarbones. 

He stares hard at the ice.

###### 

He’ll be nobody, soon. His body ages, grows and panic crawls beneath his skin.

Figure skaters are only competitive for a short time. Time is running between Yuri’s cupped hands like a fine sand; he can feel the end drawing nearer, a slow scythe against his neck. He hurries to die, to be reborn, but places in his form ache where they never have before, exhaustion sets in like he has never experienced in the past. He is far from old, but his body feels years where there are only months. Bruises that would fade now linger, blood flushes up and never returns, his pelvis aches every single day where it grinds against his femur. 

Yuri is small, and adulthood will take this from him. He sees this fear become reality in those who have skated with him, watches familiar faces fade out from the rink as they fail to stop the inevitable. He believes it to be crueler than any words Lilia can say to him, anything he can say to himself, to be forced to witness his body become morbidly unfamiliar. Yuri is supposed to be beautiful, feminine, and the hair that encroaches on the sides of his face are only the beginning of the slow, horrifying process that will spit him out awkward and uncoordinated, ugly in his largeness. 

It terrifies him deeply. Is worse than any gore ridden horror movie, is a shifting reality that leaves him with angry tears and a raw throat. _This is happening, I can’t escape it,_ and he wants to punch a mirror, wants to crunch glass into his knuckles and feel the blood drain from each incision. But he will not lose control. Not now. The luxury of emotions is not something he will allow himself, not when they have so clouded him in the past.

He needs this. He needs to skate. He needs to win. 

_Figure skaters are only competitive for a short time,_ and Yuri will not let a being as irrelevant as time stop him. Yuri will starve time away, will fight off every year with excuses to miss meals, will force his body to stay the same, to deny maturation. He will be reborn pound by pound, losing the old him in sweat and blood and tears he doesn’t let himself cry. He’ll kill his weaknesses, the faulty barriers between him and success, the reasoning he cites to the painted glass every morning and every night and every moment with a reflective surface in between.

Yuri Plisetsky is going to die.

He buries this comfort close to his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> #ProtectYuriPlisetsky
> 
>  
> 
> [yell at me on tumblr ](http://killuay.tumblr.com)


End file.
